Flutter
by Princess Pinky
Summary: A series of seven drabbles about each time Bay thinks of Zarra's wing tattoos.


**A/N:** So I've never written drabbles before, I've always tried and failed, but I had several mini ideas that were much too short to be ficlets, so I've put them all together in a series of seven Angry Medusa drabbles. (Which is the first time I've written for them, but guh, I ship them so hard!)

_**Flutter**_

_F_riday evening.

Bay perched in front of the cupboards with a dish towel in hand, drying off the chipped mugs and mismatched bowls. She slid a still dishwater warm China plate onto the stack – red, hand painted, just a little prettier than the rest – and turned to reach for its successor.

Zarra, mouthing the lyrics to Smashmouth, still had her hands submerged in the suds, consumed halfway up her elbows. Hunched over the sink, her double layered shirts – emerald over scarlet – hiked up along her washboard waist and cresting her faded hip huggers, there they fluttered: a pair of wings.

A_l_l night.

They ran. Under the billowing cloak of darkness, they were armed with spray cans and an artistic license to kill. They hunted down one of Smak's tags, ambushing it against the ruins of a boarded up mini mart in a prism of aerosol colors and adrenaline. The sirens soon whistled in the distance.

"Let's bounce!"

But they didn't bounce, they soared. Down the highway at sixty-five miles an hour; American eagles on freedom's skies. Zarra reached for their bags and inked wings peeked from their nest again.

Bay felt her pulse: short, successive thrums, punctuated by electric air.

To_u_ching dreams.

Bay awoke with a gasp, knuckles the color of snow and unpainted nails digging into the bare mattress. She'd tripped and fallen. Hard. The next thing she knew, she was clinging to Zarra's bed, comforted by the sound of shallow breathing and the scent of lime juice chicken tacos that still permeated the trailer from dinner. She sat up in the shadows, eyes still adjusting to a new way of seeing. In the single beam of moonlight whispering from the space between the curtains, she examined Zarra's leek-like form: above the elastic equator, wings flapped with each breath.

Mus_t_ering courage.

The yoke squirmed with each poke of her fork. Bay looked quickly and often between Zarra and her breakfast. She pressed the bulb of the yoke, drawing sunflower colored blood. "Why did you get it?" she asked finally.

"Get what?"

"The wings."

"You mean the tat?" she asked, pushing her chair backwards across the fragmented tile and splaying her legs so she could pointed to the wings emblazoned upon her macchiato flesh. "When I was little my dad used to tell me that I had to find my wings. Then one day he took off to find his."

Craf_t_ing plans.

A singular thought palpitated against her brain: she wanted to meet Papa Zarra, she wanted him to know that Zarra had found her wings. She yearned to repay her for making the sky touchable, for being the breath of life that she had been missing, and what better way than to return what Zarra was missing; the thing that had flown the coop?

"I need my brush!" she called, thumping against the bathroom door. Steam kissed her face upon opening. When she rediscovered sight, she found herself unable to look away from her friend's sinewy flight of fancy.

Shatt_e_red illusions.

They called her Phoenix. Bay created her the night she got back home. Phoenix looked like Bay: fairytale white skin and raven hair, but she wore a crimson corset with a heart shaped bust trimmed in gold filigree and two golden flame-like wings erupting from her hips, moving halfway up her torso. She added a scorching mini skirt, fanning bustle, and a down feather capelet, but she left off the legs in the hope that one day she might find that evolution had afforded her tentacles. Reborn again and again; beauty in the most grotesque ashes of town.

Octobe_r_ skies.

For Halloween Kathryn threw a masquerade ball and Bay descended the staircase as Phoenix, with the addition of a sequined Macabre mask. By the pool she noticed an octopus silhouette on the webs of fishnet stockings. Trailing her head back, she realized they'd been paired with a skirt made of rainbow stripped fabric that stopped in a V-waist, showcasing a set of dark wings.

"Zarra?"

"It's Medusa, Angry Girl," replied the lips behind the feathered emerald mask. Zarra broached the distance between them and suddenly two bodies merged into one, and there they fluttered: a pair of hearts.


End file.
